In its Medicine section, TIME has always sought two goals: to report and, perhaps more important, to clarify even the most esoteric technical subjects. In recent years it has run cover stories on medical matters as diverse as the dangers of cholesterol, the health effects of stress and the origin and treatment of pain. As this week's cover story on the artificial heart illustrates, TIME'S purpose has again been not only to relay the news of surgical procedures and laboratory discoveries but to place those advances in a larger context.

"A decade ago, we might have looked on such a medical achievement with something like awe," says Senior Editor David Brand, who is responsible for TIME'S health and medical stories. "We are still fascinated by this new technology, but now we are looking beyond it to very pertinent social and ethical questions."

In the past 15 years or so, reader interest in such issues has grown remarkably. Growing along with that interest has been more sophisticated medical reporting. "Journalists no longer uncritically accept the word of physicians," says Brand. They are far more knowledgeable now about medical issues, he adds, and about how such issues relate to larger concerns of society.

From the moment it was learned that William Schroeder would become the second man to receive a permanent artificial heart, TIME Correspondent Barbara Dolan became a kind of paramedic-in-training, reading literature about the operation and the man who performed it, Dr. William DeVries. She sought second, third, even fourth opinions from experts in the field. Yet she never lost sight of the human drama. At briefings for reporters at Humana Hospital Audubon in Louisville, she found herself "slipping in questions about the decor of Schroeder's hospital room between questions about whether there was too much fluid in his lungs."

Since becoming a TIME correspondent in 1981, Dolan has covered such major science stories as the implications of nuclear power and the dilemma of toxic waste.

The efforts to save Bill Schroeder are in stark contrast to a story she reported last spring on families whose religious beliefs led them to refuse medical care for their dying children. To follow every step of Schroeder's progress, Dolan, along with TIME'S Teresa Barker, has been almost as closely tethered to the Humana press center as the patient is to the machinery that powers his artificial heart. During her long reporting vigil, she has found herself frequently checking her own vital signs. "After six days of nonstop reporting," says she, "most of the journalists covering the implant were ready for intensive care. Any physician walking into the press center would have prescribed immediate bed rest."